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ček dis:"We are not surprised by the fact that music listeners are losing the willingness to legally acquire music, because of the fact that contemporary releases are mercilessly over-compressed* – a situation that turns off even the biggest music fans. For example, no natural dynamic can be heard in recent CD releases from groups such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers (for example: Stadium Arcadium). The masterful drum performance by the drummer in the band Garbage (Bleed Like Me) is totally distorted. Madonna's Hard Candy generates aggression and leads to distortion when played on disco sound systems. With Metallica (Death Magnetic), the level meter needle permanently sits in the red range!The same applies to the so-called quality criteria of surround sound recordings. Nine out of ten surround releases sound worse that the original stereo mixes or are cheap up-mixes with surround simulation – this is no way to entice music listeners to move to a new high-resolution format based on Blu-ray technology.

(* here we speak about dynamic compression and NOT data compression! Please be aware about the difference)

It has been already proofed by academic reseaches that there is no correlation between loudness and sales. There is a proven tendency that compression is limiting commercial success. The idea of over-compressed music leading to sales is only a widespread myth. The truth is: loud sells less."

I've got to say that I find 16/44.1 to be not only fine, but beautiful. Of course I'm 57 years old, played live electric music for a couple of decades and am probably incapable of hearing anything about 12 khz. There are a lot of things that golden-eared audiophiles and engineers seem to hear that get past me. I can't hear high sample rate mp3s vs lossless. To be honest, sometimes I can't hear 128kbps. What I can hear, every time, is flat, compressed or grossly boosted mastering. A 128kbps file of a great master will sound infinitely better than a lossless file that is over-compressed or noise-reduced or severely boosted in the bass and/or treble every time.

Unfortunately, we have no control over what really matters. Still, a beautifully recorded, mastered and transferred Redbook cd is a wonderful thing. Good enough that it is losing ground to much lower resolution downloads. Good enough that I think we can expect hi-res formats to remain a very rare specialty item, at least until there is a way to quickly download them.__________________I confess. I'm an audiophool.